Crime

Word of Mouth

9:43 am

Mon February 25, 2013

Between 1978 and 1988, the murders of seven women in New Hampshire and Vermont were attributed to the “Connecticut River Valley Killer”. Investigations of several suspects, and one deathbed confession went cold, and the killer was never found. Novelist Joseph Olshan’s “Cloudland,” is a fictionalized crime thriller based on the case. We spoke to Joe Olshan last spring when the book was released, now, it’s out in paperback. He lived in the upper valley when the sixth and final victim was found, and he explained what, as an outsider, he saw happen to local residents.

Word of Mouth

12:30 pm

Tue February 19, 2013

Nearly half a century ago, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood detailed the savage murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. That book is regarded as a literary landmark… the first so-called “nonfiction novel” that brought the true crime genre to the mainstream and cemented Capote’s celebrity status. It’s inspired three films, among them, “Capote,” in 2005, which earned a best actor Oscar for Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Word of Mouth

9:42 am

Tue January 29, 2013

In July of 1965, New York City Detective James McDonnell was called to the Western Union Office at Grand Central. A man posing as a detective was there with a 14-year old runaway boy. The kid’s father suspected something fishy when asked to wire twice the amount necessary to fly the boy home and called the cops. McDonnell quickly figured that the sharply dressed man was impersonating a cop and called for back-up.

NH News

8:15 pm

Sun December 9, 2012

Thieves have stolen the lights off a small New Hampshire town's Christmas tree twice in less than a week.

Officials in Boscawen say someone stole the bottom set of lights off the town tree in the overnight hours last Monday or Tuesday just hours after firefighters had put the lights up. The tree has been a tradition in Boscawen for decades, standing by the road at a well-traveled junction.

Nearly 80 years after the deaths of bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, a few, shall we say, "tools of their trade" are going up for auction. Among them are his Colt .45 and her .38 Special, which could each go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer eventually caught up with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1934, a newsreel announcer declared "the inevitable end: retribution. Here is Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who died as they lived: by the gun."

Word of Mouth

7:17 pm

Mon September 24, 2012

Pop singer Rihanna made news recently when she confessed to Oprah Winfrey her sympathy for ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, who beat her up on the eve of the Grammy Awards in 2009. Rihanna’s tears for her abuser had many domestic violence advocates up in arms, and many of the rest of us scratching our heads. Here to give her take on the complex and often baffling emotional life of domestic abuse victims is Leslie Morgan Steiner.

NH News

5:00 pm

Thu August 9, 2012

A rally was held in Concord today in reaction to racist graffiti discovered last weekend on the home of Somali refugees in the city’s South End. The crime is being linked to last September’s unsolved incident when three homes were targeted in the same neighborhood.

By noon, about a hundred people had gathered on Thompson street in Concord’s South End.

NH News

4:35 pm

Thu August 9, 2012

Concord’s mayor Jim Bouley says the city isn’t going to tolerate hate crime against its refugee residents. On Sunday morning, a racist message written in black permanent marker appeared on the house of a Somali family in the city’s South End. Bouley stopped by NHPR to talk about this latest incident, which was nearly identical to graffiti that appeared on three refugee homes last fall.

All Things Considered

5:37 pm

Fri July 20, 2012

More details are emerging today about the former Exeter Hospital employee who has been charged in connection with the Hepatitis C outbreak. Thirty patients have tested positive for a strain of the virus that matches that of 32-year old David Kwiatowski. He’s been accused of stealing syringes of pain medication, injecting himself and then returning the needles. He’s facing federal charges of tampering and acquiring a controlled substance by fraud.